Time Borders: Change of Practice and Experience through Time Layers

Hannes Palang, Kadri Semm, Lies Verstraete

Abstract

This article explores how landscape practices and meanings have changed in the southeastern border region of Setumaa, in Estonia, during the last one hundred years. Geographers have treated landscapes as consisting of material and mental layers, as well as the driving forces behind them. The ways in which each socioeconomic formation creates its own landscape have also been part of their discussions. To those discussions, we add changing political borders that coincide with formation changes - processes that influence local participation and the open interpretation of the local everyday landscape. Based on this perspective, Setumaa offers a unique study area where a multitude of natural cultural landscape patches with different life trajectories can be found situated close to each other and bounded by formation borders from different time layers. Spatial practices in a landscape depend on time context, thereby creating time borders. We demonstrate how political formations have influenced the Setu region and culture across spatial and ideological borders.